Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 74

June 8, 2023: Environmental Activisms: 21st Century Voices

[Thissummer, my older son is extending hisprior efforts to help combat climate change by interning with the amazing ClimateJust Cities project. That project is part of the long legacy of Americanenvironmental activism, so this week I’ll highlight a handful of suchactivisms. Leading up to a special weekend post on Climate Just Cities!]

On threerecent books that carry the legacy of environmental writing into the 21stcentury.

1)     Coming of Age at the End of Nature: AGeneration Faces Living on a Changed Planet (2016): Editedby JulieDunlap and Susan A. Cohen, this wonderfulcollection gathers together a wide variety of writers (twenty-two in total,as well as an introduction by the great Bill McKibben) andgenres to consider what environmental writing and activism are and can be inthis bleak historical moment. I excerpted a few pieces from it for my Spring2017 adult learning class on contemporary issues and they were verywell-received, but I would really argue that the book works best when read as awhole, putting these individual voices in conversation and community toexemplify the subtitle’s generational cohort as fully as possible.

2)     Breaking into the Backcountry (2010): I’ve highlighted my FSUcolleague Steve Edwards in a number of posts over the years, and interms of his evolving writing career have been particularly inspired by pieceson both parenting and reading. ButSteve’s first book, the magisterial Breakinginto the Backcountry, is likewise great and indeed represents a worthy heirto works like DesertSolitaire by Edward Abbey. As Isaid about Abbey’s 1968 book in that hyperlinked post, a 2010 project on theimportance and inspiration of spending nearly a year in solitude in naturemight seem a bit too divorced from the social and communal issues facing uscollectively these days. But like DesertSolitaire and Walden and so manyother great works, Steve’s thoughtful and moving book proves that the oppositeis true: that we need such books and writing now more than ever.

3)     Trace:Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (2016): Wealso need books that can bridge those only superficial gaps between (forexample) nature and society, individual experience and collective history, andI know of few works (recent or otherwise) that do so more potently than Lauret Savoy’s Trace. Savoy, a geologist and Professorof Environmental Studies at Mount Holyoke College, links those scientific andscholarly pursuits to both her own and America’s multi-racial heritage andidentity, and the result is a book that truly exemplifies interdisciplinaryengagements with some of our most complex and shared collective spaces andthemes. Trace seems to me to be a keyreflection of the future of environmental writing (and a key part of the futureof American Studies to boot), and an illustration, like all three of thesebooks, that that future is in very good hands.

Last environmentalactivism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? American environmental voices or efforts you’d highlight?

June 7, 2023: Environmental Activisms: Animated Activism

[Thissummer, my older son is extending hisprior efforts to help combat climate change by interning with the amazing ClimateJust Cities project. That project is part of the long legacy of Americanenvironmental activism, so this week I’ll highlight a handful of suchactivisms. Leading up to a special weekend post on Climate Just Cities!]

Threeexamples of the longstanding link between animation and the environment.

1)     Captain Planet and the Planeteers/The New Adventures of Captain Planet(1990-96): As a viewer and fan of the show since its first episodes, I might bebiased, but it seems to me that Ted Turner and Barbara Pyle’s environmentaledutainment program (or programs, since the show changed its name whenHanna-Barbera took over principal production in 1993) Captain Planet was one of the most radical and influentialchildren’s shows of all time. The show’s consistent environmental activistthemes and stories should be evidence enough for that claim; but if not, Iwould point to the 1992episode “A Formula for Hate,” in which the villain sought to spread liesand paranoia about AIDS and thus to turn a town against an HIV-infected youngman (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris). The pre-BostonMarch for Science talk I recorded through my role as the Scholar Strategy Network’s BostonChapter Co-Leader focused on science and public activism, and I can’timagine a clearer embodiment of that link than this Captain Planet episode.

2)     FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992): 1992 was a banner year forenvironmental animation, as it also saw the release of FernGully, a joint Australian and American animated film (based on DianaYoung’s children’s novel of the same name) about the growing threatsto the world’s rainforests. Among its many achievements, FernGully succeeded in bringing Cheech and Chong back together for thefirst time in six years; it also perhaps influenced the casting of John Woo’s Broken Arrow (1996),which likewise featured a pairing of Samantha Mathis and Christian Slater.They, like all of the film’s voice actors (including Robin Williams in his first animatedfilm as Batty) worked for scale, as all were committed to the film’senvironmental and conservationist messages. Indeed, I’d argue that Captain Planet and FernGully together reflect the leading role pop culture played inadvancing those issues in the early 1990s—a trend worth remembering wheneverwe’re tempted to dismiss pop culture’s social or communal roles.

3)     Princess Mononoke (1997):Legendary animationdirector Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 historical fantasy anime filmillustrates that those cultural contributions to environmental activism weretaking place around the globe. Like FernGully,Mononoke uses the genre of fantasy totell its story of supernatural and human heroes working together to fight foran embattled natural world against encroaching forces. Often the genre of animehas been associated with futuristic and urban settings; but Miyazaki’s film,among others in the era, redirected the genre’s tropes andthemes to the historical and natural worlds. Like Captain Planet and FernGullybefore it, Mononoke was an internationalhit (as well as a boxoffice smash in Japan), with its English-language version becomingone of the mostpopular Hollywood adaptations of an anime or Japanese film of all time. Inmy experience, Earth Day really took off as a collective phenomenon in the1990s—and if so, we might well have these pioneering 1990s animations to thank.

Next environmentalactivism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? American environmental voices or efforts you’d highlight?

June 6, 2023: Environmental Activisms: Mardy Murie

[Thissummer, my older son is extending hisprior efforts to help combat climate change by interning with the amazing ClimateJust Cities project. That project is part of the long legacy of Americanenvironmental activism, so this week I’ll highlight a handful of suchactivisms. Leading up to a special weekend post on Climate Just Cities!]

On threefactors that help explain the unique life and legacy of the “Grandmotherof the Conservation Movement.”

1)     Alaska: Born Margaret Elizabeth Thomas inSeattle in 1902, Mardy and her family moved to Fairbanks, Alaska when she was9; although she briefly attended colleges in both Oregon and Massachusetts, shewould return to Alaska to finish school at the AlaskaAgricultural College and School of Mines[ (becoming its first femalegraduate in 1924). While herlife, inspiring marriage (on which more momentarily), and conservationefforts would take her to many other places for much of the rest of her life,Alaska always remained a focal point, as illustrated by her successful 1956campaign to create the ArcticNational Wildlife Refuge and her late 1970s testimony in support of the Alaska NationalInterests Lands Conservation Act (signed by President Carter in 1980). Alaskais of course hugely singular on the American landscape, but it’s also longserved as an exemplification of the broader need to protect public lands, andno one has been more instrumental to those efforts than Mardy Murie.

2)     Her Marriage: She was Mardy Murie because of OlausMurie, a biologist and fellow conservationist she met in Fairbanks and married(at sunrise in the village of Anvik) the same year she graduated college. I’mnot sure any single detail could better capture their genuine partnership thanthe fact that theirhoneymoon consisted of a 500-mile dogsled journey around Alaska to researchits wildlife and ecosystems. The lifelong, deeply inspiring partnership thatdeveloped from there would eventually take the Muries to Moose, Wyoming (nearJackson Hole), where the ranch that served as both their home and theirresearch base has since become a National HistoricLandmark (linked to Grand Teton National Park) as well as an operating scientificand conservation school. Mardy’s activisms weren’t defined (and certainlyweren’t circumscribed) by her marriage, but they were absolutely complementedand amplified by it, as were his.

3)     TheWilderness Act: While it doesn’t really make sense to boil centuries-longmovements down to individual moments or laws, it’s nonetheless fair to say thatone of the most significant such turning points for the environmental andconservation movements in America was the 1964 passage of theWilderness Act, the first law to create a national legal definition of “wilderness.”That act was written by the then-Executive Director of the Wilderness Society, HowardZahniser, and in both its creation and its nearly decade-long fight for passagerepresented a collaboration between many of the leading voices in that longstandingorganization—a community that featured Mardy and Olaus Murie throughout theirlives. While Olaus had tragically passed away in 1963, Mardyattended the ceremony at which President Lyndon Johnson signed the Act, asis only appropriate for an activist without whom every 20th century conservationeffort would look different and far less successful.

Next environmentalactivism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? American environmental voices or efforts you’d highlight?

June 5, 2023: Environmental Activisms: Aldo Leopold

[Thissummer, my older son is extending hisprior efforts to help combat climate change by interning with the amazing ClimateJust Cities project. That project is part of the long legacy of Americanenvironmental activism, so this week I’ll highlight a handful of suchactivisms. Leading up to a special weekend post on Climate Just Cities!]

On three importantenvironmental concepts to which the pioneeringconservationist connects.

1)     Forestry at Yale: In1900, when Leopold was just 13 years old, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Divisionof Forestry director GiffordPinchot donated money to Yale to start the nation’s firstdedicated graduate forestry school. That program became young Leopold’sdream destination, and after a series of necessary steps (including attending preparatoryschool in New Jersey and completing undergraduate requirements at New Haven’s Sheffield ScientificSchool) he made it to Yale, and went on to be the poster boy for this newtype of academic conservationism. This was the era when manyscholarly disciplines were becoming more organized around academic study,but of course the very idea that forestry was a scholarly discipline waslikewise new, and a vital part of Leopold’s own career and arc.  

2)     GameManagement: Another longstanding conservationist idea that transformed intoa scholarly discipline in the course of Leopold’s lifetime was wildlife management.And indeed, in this case Leopold was a pioneering figure in thattransformation, as his 1933 appointment as Professor of Game Managementin the University of Wisconsin’s Agricultural Economics Department (itself the first such specialized department in theworld) made him the first such professor in the nation. Long ago I wrote for myTalking Points Memo column about the interconnections between big gamehunting and American history, and would note that the creation of such positionsand departments reflects an even more important shift when we locate themwithin that larger collective context.

3)     An Ecological Conscience: Those kinds ofcommunal programs and disciplines provide important contexts for Leopold’scareer, and indeed were likewise influenced by him. But ironically, it’s in atext published just after his 1948 death that Leopold’s own most influentialideas were developed. Leopold spent the last decades of his life living incentral Wisconsin’s so-called sand county (or sandprairie), an area that had been over-logged and -farmed, devastated byfires, and left largely barren by the mid-20th century. Throughouthis time there Leopold was working on the book that he completed not longbefore passing and that was published in 1949 as ASand County Almanac. The whole book explores Leopold’s “Land Ethic” (ashe termed it), but the section entitled “TheEcological Conscience” most directly expresses what he means: “In short, aland ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from the conqueror of theland-community to plain member and citizen of it.” That’s an environmentalperspective we could still much better hear and learn from.

Next environmentalactivism tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? American environmental voices or efforts you’d highlight?

June 3-4, 2023: May 2023 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

May1: Hemispheric Histories: The Organization of American States: On the 75thanniversary of the founding of the OAS, a series on hemispheric historiesstarts with three of the conferences that helped create the organization.

May2: Hemispheric Histories: Glissant and Creolization: The series continueswith the scholar and concept that help us grapple with hemispheric connections.

May3: Hemispheric Histories: The Monroe Doctrine: The limits and possibilitiesof a signature foreign policy idea, as the series rolls on.

May4: Hemispheric Histories: José Martí: The cross-cultural experiences,ideas, and collective meanings of the legendary Cuban activist.

May5: Hemispheric Histories: The Panama Canal: The series concludes with threetreaties across 130 years that together help tell the story of the famouswaterway.

May6-7: Hemispheric Studies Scholars: A special weekend post highlighting ahandful of the many scholars doing awesome hemispheric studying work!

May8: Spring 2023 Surprises: Hawthorne & History in The American Novel:For this year’s Spring semester reflections series, I wanted to highlight pleasantsurprises in this challenging semester, starting with lessons from a greathistorical novel.

May9: Spring 2023 Surprises: Akata Witch in Intro to Sci Fi and Fantasy: Theseries continues with a contemporary Afrofuturist fantasy novel my studentsreally got into.

May10: Spring 2023 Surprises: Barbie and Joe in First-Year Writing II: How 80sads helped us have important contemporary conversations, as the series reflectson.

May11: Spring 2023 Surprises: Ruiz de Burton in Multi-ethnic American Literatures:Why finally getting to teach a full novel by a favorite author was worth thewait!

May12: Spring 2023 Surprises: Contemporary Short Stories in Adult Ed: Theseries concludes with a trio of wonderful contemporary short stories I got toread and share in an adult learning class.

May13-14: Fall Mini-Previews: The Spring might have just concluded, but I wasalready looking forward to a few of my Fall 2023 courses!

May15: Watergate Figures: Sam Ervin: For the 50th anniversary ofthe Senate Watergate hearings, a series on telling figures from that momentstarts with a complex and contradictory Democratic Senator.

May16: Watergate Figures: Howard Baker: The series continues with a RepublicanSenator who both challenged and abetted Nixon.

May17: Watergate Figures: John Dean: The White House lawyer turnedwhistleblower who has continued to blow the whistle on GOP extremes, as theseries reflects on.

May18: Watergate Figures: Archibald Cox Jr.: The Watergate special prosecutorwho went on to an influential career fighting DC corruption.

May19: Watergate Figures: Jill Wine-Volner: The series concludes with theinvestigator who should be better remembered for her legal acumen than herapparel.

May20-21: Our Watergate: A special weekend post on a few contemporary echoesof the scandal (and the first that was marked as “sensitive content” byblogspot!).

May22: Great American Screenplays: Lone Star: For this year’s Memorial Daymovies series, I wanted to support the WGA by sharing past posts on some of myfavorite screenplays, starting with two exchanges in my favorite film thatcapture the complexities of collective memory.

May23: Great American Screenplays: Chinatown: The series continues with aclassic film noir that’s also pitch-perfect historical fiction.

May24: Great American Screenplays: Affliction and A Simple Plan: Winter’s andAmerica’s possibilities and limits in two dark and powerful films, as theseries writes on.

May25: Great American Screenplays: The Opposite of Sex and You Can Count on Me:The importance of depicting nontraditional families in children’s books andindependent films alike.

May26: Great American Screenplays: Memento: The series concludes with thedark, cynical, and unquestionably human final words of a contemporary Americanclassic.

May27-28: Barrett Beatrice Jackson’s Guest Post on Norman Rockwell, Robert Butler,and her Grandfather: My latest Guest Post, featuring wonderful reflectionson Americana, art, race, and much more!

May29: Remembering Memorial Day: My annual Memorial Day series kicks off withwhat we don’t remember about the holiday, and why we should.

May30: Decoration Day Histories: Frederick Douglass: The series continues withone of the great American speeches, and why it would be so important to add toour collective memories.

May31: Decoration Day Histories: Roger Pryor: An invitation and speech thatmark two frustrating shifts in American attitudes, as the series commemorateson.

June1: Decoration Day Histories: “Rodman the Keeper”: A moving short story thathelps us remember a community for whom Decoration Day’s meanings didn’t shift.

June2: Decoration Day Histories: So What?: The series concludes with three waysto argue for remembering Decoration Day alongside Memorial Day.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

June 2, 2023: Decoration Day Histories: So What?

[Followingup Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex Americanhistories connected to the holiday’s original identity as DecorationDay.]

On threeways to argue for remembering Decoration Day as well as Memorial Day.

If someone(like, I dunno, an imaginary voice in my head to prompt this post…) were to askme why we should better remember the histories I’ve traced in this week’sposts—were, that is, to respond with the “So what?” of today’s title—my firstanswer would be simple: because they happened. There are many things abouthistory of which we can’t be sure, nuances or details that will always remainuncertain or in dispute. But there are many others that are in fact quiteclear, and we just don’t remember them clearly: and the origins and initialmeanings of Decoration Day are just such clear historical facts. Indeed, soclear were those Decoration Day starting points that most Southern states chosenot to recognize the holiday at all in its early years. I can’t quite imagine agood-faith argument for not better remembering clear historical facts(especially when they’re as relevant as the origins of a holiday are on thatholiday!), and I certainly don’t have any interest in engaging with such anargument.

But thereare also other, broader arguments for better remembering these histories. Forone thing, the changes in the meanings and commemorations of Decoration Day,and then the gradual shift to Memorial Day, offer a potent illustration of thelongstanding role and power of white supremacist perspectives (not necessarilyin the most discriminatory or violent senses of the concept, but rather ascaptured by that Nation editorial’spoint about the negro “disappearing from the field of national politics”) inshaping our national narratives, histories, and collective memories. In much ofmy teaching, writing, and work over the last decade I’ve argued for what Icalled a more inclusivevs. a more exclusive version of American history, one thatovertly pushes back on those kinds of narrow, exclusionary, white supremacisthistorical narratives in favor of a broader and (to my mind) far more accuratesense of all the American communities that have contributed to and been part ofour identity and story. Remembering Decoration Day as well as Memorial Daywould represent precisely such an inclusive rather than more exclusive versionof American history.

There’salso another way to think about and frame that argument. Throughout the lastfew years, conservatives have argued that the new Common Core and AP USHistory standards portray and teach a “negative” vision ofAmerican history, rather than the celebratory one for which these commentatorsargue instead (we saw the same argument made at length in the 1776 Commission report).As so many historiansand scholars have noted in response, these arguments are at bestoversimplified, at worst blatantly inaccurate. But it is fair to say thatbetter remembering painful histories such as those of slavery, segregation, andlynching can be a difficult process, especially if we seek to make them morecentral to our collective national memories. So the more we can find inspiringmoments and histories, voices and perspectives, that connect both to thosepainful histories and to more ideal visions of American identity and community,the more likely it is (I believe) that we will remember them. And I know of fewAmerican histories more inspiring than that of Decoration Day: its origins andpurposes, its advocates like Frederick Douglass, and its strongest enduringmeaning for the African American community—and, I would argue, for all of us.

May Recapthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

June 1, 2023: Decoration Day Histories: “Rodman the Keeper”

[Followingup Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex Americanhistories connected to the holiday’s original identity as DecorationDay.]

On thetext that helps us remember a community for whom Decoration Day’s meaningsdidn’t shift.

In Monday’spost, I highlighted a brief but important scene in ConstanceFenimore Woolson’s short story “Rodmanthe Keeper” (1880). John Rodman, Woolson’s protagonist, is a (Union) CivilWar veteran who has taken a job overseeing a Union cemetery in the South; andin this brief but important scene, he observes a group of African Americans (likelyformer slaves) commemorate Decoration Day by leaving tributes to those fallenUnion soldiers. Woolson’s narrator describes the event in evocative butsomewhat patronizing terms: “They knew dimly that the men who lay beneath thosemounds had done something wonderful for them and for their children; and sothey came bringing their blossoms, with little intelligence but with muchlove.” But she gives the last word in this striking scene to one of thecelebrants himself: “we’s kep’ de day now two years, sah, befo’ you came, sah,an we’s teachin’ de chil’en to keep it, sah.”

“Rodman”is set sometime during Reconstruction—perhaps in 1870 specifically, since thefirst Decoration Day was celebrated in 1868 and the community has been keepingthe day for two years—and, as I noted in yesterday’s post, by the 1876 end ofthat historical period the meaning of Decoration Day on the national level hadbegun to shift dramatically. But as historian David Blight has frequentlynoted, such as in the piece hyperlinked in my intro section above and as quotedin this article on Blight’s magisterial book Raceand Reunion (2002), the holiday always had a different meaning for AfricanAmericans than for other American communities, and that meaning continued toresonate for that community through those broader national shifts. Indeed, it’spossible to argue that as the national meaning shifted away from the kinds ofremembrance for which Frederick Douglass argued in his 1871 speech, it becamethat much more necessary and vital for African Americans to practice that formof critical commemoration (one, to correct Woolson’s well-intended butpatronizing description, that included just as much intelligence as love).

In an April 1877editorial reflecting on the end of Reconstruction, the Nation magazine predicted happily thatone effect of that shift would be that “the negro will disappear from the fieldof national politics. Henceforth the nation, as a nation, will have nothingmore to do with him.” Besides representing one of the lowest points in thatperiodical’s long history, the editorial quite clearly illustrates why thepost-Reconstruction national meaning of Decoration Day seems to have won outover the African American one (a shift that culminated, it could be argued, inthe change of name to Memorial Day, which began being used as an alternative as earlyas 1882): because prominent, often white supremacist national voiceswanted it to be so. Which is to say, it wasn’t inevitable that the shift wouldoccur or the new meaning would win out—and while we can’t change what happenedin our history, we nonetheless can (as I’ll argue at greater length tomorrow)push back and remember the original and, for the African American community,ongoing meaning of Decoration Day.

Last DecorationDay history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 31, 2023: Decoration Day Histories: Roger Pryor

[Followingup Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex Americanhistories connected to the holiday’s original identity as DecorationDay.]

On theinvitation and speech that mark two shifts in American attitudes.

In May1876, New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music invited Confederate veteran, lawyer,and Democratic politician Roger A.Pryor to deliver its annualDecoration Day address. As Pryor noted in his remarks, theinvitation was most definitely an “overture of reconciliation,” one that Iwould pair with the choice (earlier that same month) of Confederate veteran and poet SidneyLanier to write and deliver theopening Cantata at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Indeed, reunion andreconciliation were very much the themes of 1876, threads that culminated in thecontested presidential election and the end of Federal Reconstructionthat immediately followed it (and perhaps, although historians have differentperspectives on this point, stemmed from that election’s controversialresults). In any case, this was a year in which the overtures of reconciliationwere consistently heard, and we could locate Pryor’s address among the rest.

Yet theremarks that Pryor delivered in his Decoration Day speech could not beaccurately described as reconciliatory—unless we shift the meaning to “tryingto reconcile his Northern audiences with his Confederate perspective on thewar, its causes and effects, and both regions.” Pryor was still waiting, heargued, for “an impartial history” to be told, one that more accuratelydepicted both “the cause of secession” and Civil War and the subsequent,“dismal period” of Reconstruction. While he could not by any measure becategorized as impartial, he nonetheless attempted to offer his own version ofthose histories and issues throughout the speech—one designed explicitly, Iwould argue, to convert his Northern audience to that version of both past andpresent. Indeed, as I argue at length in myfirst book, narratives of reunion and reconciliation were quickly supplantedin this period by ones of conversion, attempts—much of the time, asReconstruction lawyer and novelist AlbionTourgée noted in an 1888 article, verysuccessful attempts at that—to convert the North and the nationas a whole to this pro-Southern standpoint.

In mybook’s analysis I argued for a chronological shift: that reunion/reconciliationwas a first national stage in this period, and conversion a second. But Pryor’sDecoration Day speech reflects how the two attitudes could go hand-in-hand: theNorthern invitation to Pryor could reflect, as he noted, that attitude ofreunion on the part of Northern leaders; and Pryor’s remarks and their effects(which we cannot know for certain in this individual case, but which were, asTourgée noted, quite clear in the nation as a whole) could both comprise andcontribute to the attitudes of conversion to the Southern perspective. And inany case, it’s important to add that both reconciliation and conversion differdramatically from the original purpose of Decoration Day, as delineated sobluntly and powerfully by Frederick Douglass in his 1871 speech: remembrance,of the Northern soldiers who died in the war and of the cause for which theydid so. By 1876, it seems clear, that purpose was shifting, toward acombination of amnesia and propaganda, of forgetting the war’s realities andremembering a propagandistic version of them created by voices like Pryor’s.

NextDecoration Day history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 30, 2023: Decoration Day Histories: Frederick Douglass

[Followingup Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex Americanhistories connected to the holiday’s original identity as DecorationDay.]

On one ofthe great American speeches, and why it’d be so important to add to ourcollective memories.

In a long-agoguest post on Ta-NehisiCoates’s The Atlantic blog, CivilWar historian Andy Hallhighlighted Frederick Douglass’s amazing 1871 Decoration Day speech (full textavailable at the first hyperlink in this sentence). Delivered at Virginia’sArlington National Cemetery, then as now the single largest resting place ofU.S. soldiers, Douglass’s short but incredibly (if notsurprisingly) eloquent and pointed speech has to be ranked as one of the mostimpressive in American history. I’m going to end this first paragraph here soyou can read the speech in full (again, it’s at the first hyperlink above), andI’ll see you in a few.

Welcomeback! If I were to close-read Douglass’s speech, I could find choices worthextended attention in every paragraph and every line. But I agree with Hall’sfinal point, that the start of Douglass’s concluding paragraph—“But we are nothere to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause.We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to therepublic”—is particularly noteworthy and striking. Granted, this was not yetthe era that would come to be dominated by narratives of reunion andreconciliation between the regions, and then by ones of conversation to theSouthern perspective (on all of which, see tomorrow’s post); an era in whichDouglass’s ideas would be no less true, nor in which (I believe) he would havehesitated to share them, but in which a Decoration Day organizing committeemight well have chosen not to invite a speaker who would articulate such aclear and convincing take on the causes and meanings of the Civil War. Yet evenin 1871, to put that position so bluntly and powerfully at such an occasionwould have been impressive for even a white speaker, much less an AfricanAmerican one.

If we wereto better remember Douglass’s Decoration Day speech, that would be one overtand important effect: to push back on so many of the narratives of the CivilWar that have developed in the subsequent century and a half. One of the mostfrequent such narratives is that there was bravery and sacrifice on both sides,as if to produce a leveling effect on our perspective on the war—but asDouglass notes in the paragraph before that conclusion, recognizing individualbravery in combat is not at all the same as remembering a war: “The essence andsignificance of our devotions here today are not to be found in the fact thatthe men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle.” I believeDouglass here can be connected to Lincoln’sGettysburg Address, and its own concluding notion of honoringthe dead through completing “the unfinished work”: “It is rather for us to behere dedicated to the great task remaining before us.” That work and taskremained unfinished and great long after the Civil War’s end, after all—andindeed remain so to this day in many ways. Just another reason to betterremember Frederick Douglass’s Decoration Day speech.

NextDecoration Day history tomorrow,

BenI

PS. Whatdo you think?

May 29, 2023: Remembering Memorial Day

[Before aseries on DecorationDay, the holiday that preceded and evolved into Memorial Day, aspecial post on shifting our collective memories of the holiday’s histories.]

On what we don’t remember about Memorial Day, and why we should.

In a long-ago post onthe Statue of Liberty, I made a case for remembering, and engagingmuch more fully, with what the Statue was originally intended, by its Frenchabolitionist creator, to symbolize: the legacy of slavery andabolitionism in both America and France, the assassination of Abraham Lincolnand the memories of what he had done to advance that cause, and so on. I triedthere, hopefully with some success, to leave ample room for what the Statue hascome to mean, both for America as a whole and, more significantly still, forgeneration upon generation of immigrant arrivals to the nation. I think thosemeanings, especially when tied to Emma Lazarus’ poem and itsradically democratic and inclusive vision of our national identity, arebeautiful and important in their own right. But how much more profound andmeaningful, if certainly more complicated, would they be if they were linked toour nation’s own troubled but also inspiring histories of slavery andabolitionism, of sectional strife and Civil War, of racial divisions and thosewho have worked for centuries to transcend and bridge them?

I would say almost exactly the same thing when it comes to the history of Memorial Day. For thelast century or so, at least since the end of World War I, the holiday hasmeant something broadly national and communal, an opportunity to remember andcelebrate those Americans who have given their lives as members of our armedforces. While I certainly feel that some of the narratives associated with thatidea are as simplifying and mythologizing and meaningless as many others I’veanalyzed here—“they died for our freedom” chief among them; the world would bea vastly different, and almost certainly less free, place had the Axis powerswon World War II (for example), but I have yet to hear any convincing case thatthe world would be even the slightest bit worse off were it not for the morethan 50,000 American troops who lives were wasted in the Vietnam War (foranother)—those narratives are much more about politics and propaganda, anddon’t change at all the absolutely real and tragic and profound meaning ofservice and loss for those who have done so and all those who know and lovethem. One of the most pitch-perfect statements of my position on such lossescan be found in a song by (surprisingly) Bruce Springsteen; his “Gypsy Biker,” from Magic (2007), certainlyincludes a strident critique of the Bush Administration and Iraq War, as seenin lines like “To those who threw you away / You ain’t nothing but gone,” butmostly reflects a brother’s and family’s range of emotions and responses to thedeath of a young soldier in that war.

Yet as with the Statue, Memorial Day’s original meanings andnarratives are significantly different from, and would add a great deal ofcomplexity and power to, these contemporary images. The holiday was first knownas Decoration Day, and was (at least per the thorough histories of it by scholarslike David Blight) originated in 1865 by a group of freedslaves in Charleston, South Carolina; the slaves visited a cemetery for Unionsoldiers on May 1st of that year and decorated their graves, a quietbut very sincere tribute to what those soldiers have given and what it hadmeant to the lives of these freedmen and –women. The holiday quickly spread tomany other communities, and just as quickly came to focus more on the lesspotentially divisive, or at least less complex as reminders of slavery anddivision and the ongoing controversies of Reconstruction and so on,perspectives of former soldiers—first fellow Union ones, but by the 1870sveterans from both sides. Yet former slaves continued to honor the holiday intheir own way, as evidenced by a powerful scene from Constance FenimoreWoolson’s “Rodmanthe Keeper” (1880), in which the protagonist observes a group ofex-slaves leaving their decorations on the graves of the Union dead at thecemetery where he works. On the one hand, these ex-slave memorials are parallelto the family memories that now dominate Memorial Day, and serve as a beautifulreminder that the American family extends to blood relations of very differentand perhaps even more genuine kinds. But on the other hand, the ex-slavememorials represent far more complex and in many ways (I believe) significantAmerican stories and perspectives than a simple familial memory; these acts werea continuing acknowledgment both of some of our darkest moments and of the waysin which we had, at great but necessary cost, defeated them.

Again, I’mnot trying to suggest that any current aspects or celebrations of Memorial Dayare anything other than genuine and powerful; having heard someeloquent words about what my Granddad’s experiences with his fellow soldiershad meant to him (he even commandeered an abandoned bunker andhand-wrote a history of the Company after the war!), I share thoseperspectives. But as with the Statue and with so many of our nationalhistories, what we’ve forgotten is just as genuine and powerful, and a lot moretelling about who we’ve been and thus who and where we are. The more we canremember those histories too, the more complex and meaningful our holidays, ourcelebrations, our memories, and our futures will be. Next Decoration Day posttomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?